10 Common Cognitive Distortions

Someone said that “the mind is so powerful” and I know sometimes I can attest to that in many different ways. I found knowing these 10 Thought Distortions helpful when I am doing my long distance swim and bike.  A few hours on the road or at the lake/pool produces a mild depression or anxiety and thinking and self monitoring  my emotions during the ordeal help me to survive and finish the event. Life also is like a race event, there are distance obstacles, problems, issues, a start and a finish line and most of us don’t realize that there is the “in-between” when we are suppose to enjoy that “space” before reaching the finish line.  Not knowing how to handle our emotions along the journey can sometimes brings us discomfort instead of joy.

Cognitive Distortion Checklist [download]
Daily Mood Log [download]
Daily Mood Log v2 [download]

Common Cognitive Distortions We all tend to think in extremes…and when traumatic events happen we think that way even more. Here are some common cognitive distortions. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way. Reference: When Panic Attacks by David Burns p.16

1.  All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2.  Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.  “This always happens”.

3.  Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water. 

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don’t count" for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. 
* Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check it out.
* The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 

6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick." 

7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I’m a loser." When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He’s a damn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 

10. Blame: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible. You find fault instead of solving the problem.
* Self-Blame-You blame yourself for something you weren’t entirely responsible for.
* Other-Blame- You blame others and overlook ways you contributed to the problem